This discussion interests me, since in the field I worked in, religion and Christianity, this issue also comes up. We have several "Pseudo" authors. Once piece of advice I got while doing authority work as that the Pseudo person has to represent a body of work (On that basis, there might be several Pseudo-Aristotles in the examples given) But I am more intrigued about this idea of "non-persons." So if we have a Pseudo author writing is the work is a Pseudo work? Really? If there is a work, there is some presumption, whether stated or not, that the work was written by a real person. One would hope. The idea of Nomen came up. The idea of nomen is that nomen indicates nothing. For instance, at the grocery story you are looking for aisle where coffee is located. You see the indication [nomen where it should be located]; you go there. There is no coffee. But the nomen still exists [otherwise you would not have gone to that aisle].

Historically speaking, thank God for the Pseudos; otherwise, we would not have as much ancient literature as we do; much was destroyed; but much was preserved under Pseudo authors; the names of those authors were recognized and authoritative; so the Pseudo works were not destroyed because they were hidden by the accepted, canonical names. Read Norden and discover some literature has come down to us simply because the were listed under the names of the canonical authors. [Yes there was sense of canon in ancient literature.]

Undifferentiated? I guess so, maybe. Or think of them as a bit like the kind of “house” pseudonym used by some publishers, although in
this case the “pseudonym” is assigned retrospectively by academics.

One more thought on this. I actually don’t think LRM’s position on fictional persons is in conflict with the sort of practice advocated by John and
Robert because there is no question that these “pseudo” writers existed. They existed. We just don’t know what their real names were. So the problems with treating fictional persons as authors—in particular for me the problem of putting them in fictional time
periods—does not apply to these authors.

I disagree slightly with one thing Robert said. I would say these are “undifferentiated” names, at least in spirit. By setting up the “pseudo” authority, we are saying we don’t really know what their identity was. I think that’s pretty much the same as the
spirit of old undifferentiated authorities, because occasionally several of the identities on them might be found to be the same person, too.

Ted Gemberling

From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging <[log in to unmask]>
On Behalf Of Robert MaxwellSent: Wednesday, August 1, 2018 5:43 PMTo:[log in to unmask]Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] Pseudo Aristotele

I agree with John's point about huge disruption in the file for not much (if any) benefit. First, most of these "Pseudo" names are well known to classics scholars and others under the "Pseudo" name (frequently evidenced
by usage on title pages). If our primary goal is "convenience of the user", works should be gathered together under the name users expect to find, in spite of theoretical problems now in place thanks to LRM. However, it also has to be admitted that these works
haven't all been treated the same. Some have been established under a "Pseudo" name and others have been established under title.

The problem with separating them all out as individual authors (e.g. "Pseudo Aristotle (Author of ...)") is that these are defined by what they are not: the works of, for example, "Pseudo Aristotle" are works that have been attributed to Aristotle and that
are now believed not to be by Aristotle. Generally that's all we know about them. So (in my opinion) it would be misleading to separate them into individual person records because maybe works A B & C are in fact by one person (though not Aristotle) whereas
D & E are by someone else (still not Aristotle); but we just don't know. So separating the authors of A-E into five separate "person" records would be misleading.

The treatment of the "Pseudo" authors is in some ways the exact opposite of treatment of pseudonyms. With a pseudonym you have a real person pretending to be a fictitious character. With the "Pseudo" authors you have works being created pretending to be by
a real person for one reason or another, usually to give more authority to the work (this is almost exclusively a phenomenon associated with pre-modern works), so a different treatment for them from that of pseudonyms might be warranted. Similarly, they aren't
exactly undifferentiated names either (all the works now attributed to a "Pseudo" name might in fact be by a single person whose real identity is unknown).

With John, I think making a change in this practice would result in a disruption that does not serve the user. However, I have for some time felt that it would be a good idea for PCC to study the issue of the "Pseudo" authors, first to see what if any consistency
there is in current practice and then to see if it continues to serve the user or if a different practice would be better. I'd be interested in being part of such a study if PCC decides to commission one.

Stephen raises some good questions. I don’t know the answers, but couldn’t the same arguments be made about many of the dozens (hundreds?) of other
“Pseudo” authors in the file? It seems like a huge disruption. Does it serve the user and the scholars who might know them as Pseudo Aristotele or whatever? We’ve been told that we’ll be able to get around LRM’s nonsense about real persons by the use of
nomens or something like that, so that shouldn’t be an issue.

Note, however, this 667 on the NAR for Virgil: “Works attributed to "Pseudo-Virgil" or otherwise once attributed to Virgil but now known to be spurious
such as the Appendix Vergiliana should normally be entered under a uniform title with an added entry for Virgil.”

Any name that you used in an author-title 400 would have to be established, according to my understanding of the policies.

The LCNAF includes "Pseudo Aristotele" (n 2001003970), defined in a 670 attributed to Wikipedia as "a general cognomen for authors of philosophical or medical treatises who attributed their work to the Greek philosopher
Aristotle, or whose work was later attributed to him by others." Should it be coded as an undifferentiated name heading? And then what?

There are several titles attributed in LCNAF to "Pseudo Aristotele". Arguably this is a case where catalogers have inherited attribution to an undifferentiated name from classical scholarship. Nevertheless, should we
break "Pseudo Aristotele" into separate, individuated authorities (implied in the work examples below) in accordance with the RDA and IFLA/LRM principle that authors must be real persons? That would also enable the work authorities to be more clearly distinguished
as being by separate authors:

Then there's Anaximenes of Lampsacus, whose work Rhetorica ad Alexandrum has been attributed at times to Aristotle and to Pseudo Aristotle. Should we change the 400s on the authority for the "Anaximenes
... $t Rhetorica ad Alexandrum" to:

Hopefully that would not entail also establishing " Pseudo Aristotle $c (Author of Rhetorica ad Alexandrum)" for which there is currently no attributed resource.

Alternatively, these could all be entered under title, with 400s for the former entries under "Pseudo Aristotele" (unqualified). With no need to attribute works to the differentiated identities
of Pseudo Aristotele, we could dispense with re-establishing them individually--the 100 name heading would be superseded by 400 $a $t references to works entered under title.

Lastly, at the moment it appears that "Quaestiones mechanicae" has been established under both "Aristotle" and "Pseudo Aristotele" in LCNAF, so entry under title might be a way to resolve that
argument.

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